


Blue Canary (Original Version)

by AceyEnn



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Humanstuck, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 14:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceyEnn/pseuds/AceyEnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia kills herself, leaving Sollux to pick up the pieces.</p><p>Currently being rewritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aradia: Explain.

**Author's Note:**

> Conceptually inspired, rather loosely, by pajamaprodigy's excellent one-shot, Ghost Stories (http://archiveofourown.org/works/645002). 
> 
> The title is a reference to Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants.
> 
> Disclaimer: I know very little about how schizophrenia actually works. I'm going off of the research I've done, but I'm fairly sure some of it's wrong. Just bear with me.

 You shouldn't have to deal with all this. You shouldn't be planning my funeral, or seeing a grief counselor. You shouldn't be alone in the apartment.

 

You should hate me, really. After all, I'm the one who jumped, not you. 

 

I wish you would stop blaming yourself. 

 

The voices, the shadows--they were all so very real to me. A simple diagnosis ( _schizophrenia_ , they said) didn't make them less real. Neither did your reassurances, or the pills, or the therapy. They were _real_ , Sollux. I thought they were, at least.

 

They told me such awful things. They said you didn't love me, that no one ever could and I'd be better off dead. That my sister was so messed up because of me, and that if she died it'd all be my fault.

 

I believed them.

 

You shouldn't have had to see me throw the window open, Sollux. You shouldn't have seen me jump, or crush some poor soul's car with my dying body. 

 

There shouldn't be a little blurb about my suicide in the paper. ( _Aradia Megido, age 21, jumped out the window of her 13th story apartment, dying on impact and leaving behind her boyfriend, mother, and older sister._ ) There shouldn't be a memorial service on Sunday.

 

I know how selfish I was now, but please understand that at the time, it really did feel like I was doing you a favor by killing myself. I thought you'd move on, because you didn't love me, and neither did anyone else. I thought maybe you'd go for Feferi--she's always liked you, you know. But now I watch you screaming, crying, throwing things, and I know the truth.

 

You did love me. You still do. And even though I'm in heaven now, I know I don't belong there, because _I screwed up._

 

You used to call me your blue canary, because I was always there watching over you, and I didn't understand it until you gave me that mix CD. It became our song--cheesy, I know, but true. I didn't have the heart to say you had it all wrong.

 

 _I_ was the one who needed a guardian angel.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in question, as you probably guessed from the author's note, is Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants.


	2. Sollux: Regret everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would've just kept this as a one-shot but I got ideas, oops.
> 
> Just as a note, this is going to alternate between points of view, with Aradia narrating the odd-numbered chapters and Sollux narrating the even-numbered ones. The chapters are, in a way, paired--chapters 1 and 2 occur more or less simultaneously.

 I hate you sometimes.

 

I hate you for being so fucked in the head. I hate you for faking happiness. I hate you for dying.

 

I hate myself, too, for not being able to help you. In fact, I hate myself more than I hate you, more frequently and more intensely. 

 

Part of me wishes the voices had been real, not just the product of a broken mind. I'd have something tangible to blame. I could say you died because they pushed you. It could've been a murder and not a suicide.

 

You told me the voices and figures you heard and saw had names, that the worst one was a girl named Vriska Serket who wore glasses and mocked you mercilessly, so I did my research. She did exist, but she died in a car accident when she was eighteen and you were only a baby. 

 

There had been a media circus over the whole ordeal--apparently her mother was something of a celebrity, so she got caught up in that when she died. Maybe you read about it somewhere and thought she was haunting you or something.

 

But I know she wasn't. The Vriska you saw had horns and gray skin and eight eyes, or so you told me. She wasn't real, and yet I can't help but wish she was.

 

It was hard on me too, you know. It _hurt_ to see the strange symbols you'd carved into your skin as “protection,” the numbers you'd scrawled all over the walls of the shower ( _413, 612, 1025, 11_ ), the way the life had left your eyes months before you died.

 

I wish I could forget the way you looked at me before you climbed out the window. I wish I could forget you screaming at me, saying that I didn't love you and that I would be better off without you anyway.

 

(You were wrong, Aradia. You were so fucking wrong, and I hate that.)

 

I still have the image burned into my mind of you falling, landing on the black Toyota thirteen stories below, of me calling 911 and you being pronounced dead. They said it was instant, painless. 

 

But you hadn't died yet, not quite. I remember going downstairs and staying with you while I--we--waited for the ambulance, and you were still twitching, gurgling as blood bubbled up from your throat, and I don't know if it hurt for you, but it sure as hell hurt for me.

 

It still does. It still hurts like hell, and more than anything else, I wish I didn't love you.

 

Maybe then it'd be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Toyota thing is a really lame joke and I should probably be ashamed.


	3. Aradia: Watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fic doesn't stop from getting shittier.

 You probably don't think I can see you crying, but I can.

 

They did a good job, I think. My hair looks nicer than it did when I was alive, and the dress you picked out from my closet, the white sundress with the dark red bits, is gorgeous. I think I would've picked the same one.

 

There's no blood anymore. My face looks...serene. I almost look not-dead, actually.

 

Almost. There's no disguising the broken bones or snapped neck.

 

I just want you to stop crying over me. 

 

The service was nice, though I do wish you had been able to give my eulogy. Karkat did a good job, but it would've been better if it were you, even if you couldn't stop sobbing. 

 

There was a lot of sadness overall, I could tell, and if I could come back I would, if only for the sake of those who cared about me. Especially you.

 

Even when I thought you hated me, I still loved you.

 

I still _love_ you, present tense, and I wish I didn't. Maybe if I could fall out of love with you I wouldn't feel so awful about seeing you sobbing over my casket. 

 

Wouldn't it be great if it were so easy?

 

Heaven doesn't change you much, Sollux. Sure, the hallucinations are gone, but I'd gladly go back to dealing with them if it meant I could come back to Earth. I'd give up everything I have here, because maybe then we could be _happy._

 

They say that bargaining is one of the stages of grief. I guess I'm grieving over my own death, and I guess that's pretty narcissistic of me in a way, but I can't help it. I want to live again. I'd get treatment, I'd take my pills...hell, I'd be perfectly willing to check myself into the psych ward if I needed to. 

 

Damara's screaming at you to leave. She's blaming you for everything. Funny how she suddenly cares about my existence--you know how she is. She _hated_ me. That wasn't a delusion on my part, she honestly did. I can't blame her as much as I wish I could, though; she was even worse off than me in a lot of ways, I think. Mentally, that is. 

 

I still remember getting the news when I was twelve, that she'd been in an accident and suffered damage to her frontal lobe. I didn't understand it then--why would I?--but I knew that something was _wrong_. She was kind of the black sheep of the Megido family after that. No one talked about Damara--it just wasn't done.

 

And then around five years later I started hallucinating, and no one talked about me anymore either. 

 

It's funny, you know. We'd always expected her to die first, even after my diagnosis. Even if she hadn't been suicidal herself, she led a dangerous life. 

 

We talked about her a lot, you and me. We talked about Mituna, too, and how he'd been in an accident himself and also suffered brain damage, and I guess we sort of bonded over that--sure, you were severely bipolar and I was schizophrenic, but at least we were better off than our siblings. 

 

That was my train of thought, anyway. I wish I'd been right. I wish none of this had ever happened.

 

I don't want to be buried, Sollux. I don't want them to close the lid to my coffin.

 

_Save me._


	4. Sollux: Begin grieving properly.

Funerals are supposed to provide closure, last time I checked, but yours failed spectacularly at that goal. 

 

I mean, Karkat's eulogy was nice and all. It's just that he left out a lot.

 

He only focused on your good days, when you just acted like an ordinary girl with a love of ancient things and a dweeby streak a mile wide, but the fact is that most of the time you weren't like that, at least not in the months leading up to your suicide. You _changed_ , AA, and we all knew that. I think you knew it too.

 

Don't get me wrong. I wish his eulogy had been more accurate in that respect, that you had been a normal girl when you died and not a...fuck, how do I put this?

 

A wreck, I guess.

 

To be fair, if you had been, you probably wouldn't be dead.

 

I spent the whole thing crying. Fuck, even lying dead in a goddamn wooden box, you looked beautiful. I picked out your favorite dress and everything. I thought you might appreciate that somehow. (Kanaya insisted on doing your hair and makeup, by the way. Sorry about that.)

 

Your sister came up to me while I was spending a few last minutes with the empty husk that used to be you. She grabbed me by the collar and started screaming-- _”It's all your fault, you fucking bastard, you killed my goddamn sister and I hope you die”--_ and honestly, that was almost funny. She's not a good actress. It was obvious that she was faking any love she may have had for you.

 

And then they closed your casket and took you to your final resting place. (It's a nice graveyard, you would've liked it. Lots of weird old statues.) 

 

You are quite literally six feet under, and the funny thing is, I haven't cried since they buried you a week ago. I'm still depressed, maybe even more than I was before, and I _feel_ like crying, but the tears just won't come.

 

People, friends of ours, have been dropping by the apartment lately. They usually bring food. Sometimes they tell me to just start putting away the things you left behind, but I can't. I don't want to.

 

I doubt I will any time soon.


End file.
